I'm beginning to know my body, to know when I need a few extra days off between climbing cuz weakness or hurting. But - this time I have a weird pain and don't know whether to work through it or baby it, or exactly what I did. It hurts if I....place left hand as if scratching your cheek. Now raise your elbow up out in front of you. Now rotate your wrist counter clockwise until you are reaching up to scratch under your chin. I get kinda sharp pain in forearm and to a lesser degree my arm. It sort of feels like I am stretching the muscles/joints but there is pain along with the stretching feeling. Doing the same with my right arm there is zero pain. Been this way for two days. Am I freaking out and this is just normal progression pain, or something I ought to give it some time to heal? BTW - I did not discover the pain by doing my explanation; that is just the best way to relate when I do experience the pain.

Having worked as a personal trainer/conditioning coach for a while, I have found over the years that almost everybody, regardless of fitness level or knowledge, seems to possess the ability to distinguish between "good" pain (muscle soreness) vs "bad" pain (injury to muscle, joint, or other tissue).

What you have does not sound like muscle soreness whatsoever and I think you already know that.

You might have a muscle strain in one of your forearm flexors and you happen to feel it when you lengthen the muscle in the way described. Or if you feel it above the elbow too maybe it is some kind of nerve entrapment. You could try resting it and avoiding aggravating movements and see what happens but if it persists for two weeks or longer medical attention should be in order.

I'm beginning to know my body, to know when I need a few extra days off between climbing cuz weakness or hurting. But - this time I have a weird pain and don't know whether to work through it or baby it, or exactly what I did. It hurts if I....place left hand as if scratching your cheek. Now raise your elbow up out in front of you. Now rotate your wrist counter clockwise until you are reaching up to scratch under your chin. I get kinda sharp pain in forearm and to a lesser degree my arm. It sort of feels like I am stretching the muscles/joints but there is pain along with the stretching feeling. Doing the same with my right arm there is zero pain. Been this way for two days. Am I freaking out and this is just normal progression pain, or something I ought to give it some time to heal? BTW - I did not discover the pain by doing my explanation; that is just the best way to relate when I do experience the pain.

This is interesting.

Let me ask you, what happens if, instead of keeping the elbow forward, you keep it out to the left, with the fingers pointing down, as though you were going to scratch under your left ear (but with your fingers down, so that the wrist joint is extended)?

If that position still hurts, what happens when you sidebend you head to the right, i.e., as though you were going to try to touch your right ear to the right shoulder, while maintaining the same left arm position?

This is a pretty good approximation of an ulnar nerve tension test, and might indicate (as aerili astutely mentioned above), a nerve entrapment or other injury to the ulnar nerve.

Thanks for putting this in perspective; I didn't earn the right to whine. It's just that I'm making gains so much lately (for me) that I really want to continue along that line. But, it is obvious my body is telling me to back off.

I have this problem too. I suffered from bicep pain for months and months when I started. The pain would sometimes last a few days even. Eventually I stopped getting this problem and instead started getting wrist pain (which seems to recover faster). I've recently taken a month break and now I'm climbing again I'm back to bicep pain again its so irritating!

I guess its just something I need to work through. Hopefully it will go away soon again xD